ਤੱਕ ਦਾ three-quarters of the population will experience trauma or a traumatic incident over their lifetime – an experience or multiple experiences that are deeply distressing, disturbing or harmful.
Every person’s response to ਸਦਮਾ is unique, including the severity of the impact and how long it might affect them. There’s no “right” or “wrong” way to respond, and also no timeline on when someone might “get over it”.
Most people are aware and accepting of the occurrence of trauma, however fewer understand the long-lasting impacts of it and on someone’s behaviour. That’s what we’re hoping to draw more awareness to and change in the wider community.
What’s the relationship between trauma and behaviour?
At the most basic level, trauma has a profound impact on the brain, which controls how we act, feel, and think.
Everyone’s brain automatically responds to all inputs in a specific order – from the lowest to the highest parts of the brain. This image may help you visualise the sequence.
The most basic, instinctual part of our brain (also referred to as the reptilian brain) is continually and instantaneously scanning for threat. Its number one job is to ensure our immediate survival. Most of the time, we don’t even notice that it’s scanning since the inputs (e.g. sight, sound, smell, or sensation) are safe.
If it detects a threat, it’s a different story. The “middle” part of the brain (mammalian), will instantaneously respond and the stress responses – flight, fight, or freeze – will kick in.
A person experiencing the flight or fight response may appear agitated, anxious, confused, or be shouting in anger or frustration. At the same time, they might be experiencing an increased heart rate or a surge of adrenaline, as the body prepares to give flight, fight or freeze. Since the brain is completely focused on the threat itself, they might not process other things like time passing or bystanders present.
The freeze response occurs when a threat is too overwhelming, or our ability to escape, defend, or protect ourselves is compromised. Someone experiencing the freeze response may be very distracted, slow to respond, vague, or disconnected from what is happening around them. The brain stops processing information and focuses on maintaining heartbeat and breathing. This is thought to be a primal protective factor to inhibit pain and fear that we are unable to tolerate.
If the stress response is successful in removing or lessening the threat, the “higher” part of the brain (neocortex) can then engage. Once that happens, people can think, apply reasoning and logic to analyse the situation, calm down, and make conscious decisions about what to do next.
The long-lasting influence of trauma
Put simply: trauma changes the way brains work. If the fight, flight, or freeze responses are activated much more regularly and/or continually lead to harm, particularly in childhood, they become more reactive – so they activate more intensely and more frequently.
This means that once the actual traumatic event is no longer a threat, the brain remains hyper-sensitive – like it’s waiting to respond to the threat at any moment. Any input to the brain that “reminds” it of the previous traumatic threat will immediately and automatically “trigger” the fight, flight, or freeze response. The brain tricks the person into thinking, feeling, and sensing as though they’re back in that traumatic event, before they’ve had time to realise that it’s not a threat at all.
This is what people refer to as being “triggered”.
It’s important to point out that if a person experiences trauma at a young age, the impacts and the stress response can be more pronounced and profound. As the child’s brain is still developing this heightened reactivity or sensitivity can become “hard-wired” into their functioning.
What does a trauma response look like?
Take this hypothetical scenario to consider:
Jamie experienced long-term physical abuse at the hands of an authority figure when he was a child. The abuser became violent when they were drunk, and every time they got drunk, they put on a particular song and repetitively played it. The abuser was eventually removed from Jamie’s life. His life became safer and he was well nurtured, but he never received treatment for the trauma that he suffered. Although he experienced difficult days, he “got on with it”.
One day, as an adult, Jamie was grocery shopping when the song his abuser used to play came on over the speaker.
Since his brain was already hard-wired to perceive that sound as a significant threat, it instantly clicked into the stress response (fight, flight, or freeze). He became agitated, paced up and down, muttered things to himself. Other people in the supermarket started staring at him and he yelled at them to stay away.
The stress response was very intense because the brain knew that that song was originally associated with actual harm. That intensity can mean that the brain gets “stuck” in the heightened stress response, inhibiting “access” to the neocortex, where Jamie would otherwise recognise that he was not actually under threat in this situation.
How you can help someone having a trauma response
Of course, after you read this, it’s not expected you’ll be able to de-escalate someone who has been triggered. It can be a confronting thing to witness and unpleasant for all involved.
We do hope, however, that, if you are in the presence of someone who is behaving disproportionately angry, erratic, argumentative, or distressed, you can consider the possible reasons behind the behaviour. Perhaps you could try to judge the person less harshly and respond with compassion instead of anger (if the situation allows).
When someone is experiencing a trauma response, the reactions from people around them have the potential to either add to or lessen the intensity of what’s happening. So, a calmer, safer response is likely to be more beneficial to the situation than a heavy-handed, angry response.
In Jamie’s situation, for instance, if you didn’t consider that trauma might be behind his actions, you might stare at him or forcefully tell him to calm down. This might heighten Jamie’s fear and his threat response.
On the other hand, if you asked yourself, “What has made him act this way?”, you might be able to make the situation calmer and safer. It doesn’t have to be by interacting with Jamie directly but calming fellow bystanders and ensuring the situation doesn’t intensify. That is the difference a little bit of knowledge can make.
If you’d like to learn more about trauma and its impact, we encourage you to take a look at the resources below.
- What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Dr Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey
- The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk
- Blue Knot Foundation
At Relationships Australia NSW, we offer specialist services for people who have experienced institutional trauma through ਵਾਟਲ ਪਲੇਸ. If you, or someone you love, could benefit from working with our team, we encourage you to ਸਾਡੇ ਨਾਲ ਸੰਪਰਕ ਕਰੋ.
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